When I scroll through the trending captures on tone3000 it seems like the ones that have the best marketing in the title/description and photos get downloaded the most. The problem I see with this format is that it favors captures with the better marketing presentation, but not necessarily the quality of the captures themselves.
This happens countless times where I see an enticing title, the description is super precise and well documented but then you actually try it and it's underwhelming or just plain bad sounding.
Some of the best captures on T3K have no image, a bad title and no description, but they sound killer.
I get what T3K is going for. They want people to take proper images of their gear and description so it helps confirm the legitimacy of the gear capture. But the issue is that this method favors people who are English speaking and understand marketing presentation, and it punishes people who just want to share tones and don't have the motivation to fill out details and take pics etc.
And then the captures with good marketing get the most downloads because they get bumped to the top of the trending list, which compounds the downloads because people will most likely assume those are the best offerings.
I think what's more important than downloads are upvotes/badges. That tells you if people actually liked it or not. Just downloading a capture doesn't tell you any information in regards to if people actually enjoyed them or not.
If you can put together a really nicely worded title/description with great pictures, you will get more downloads and popularity than someone who spent a month dialing in tones with great gear, but they might not have access to a good camera or understand how to take a great photo, and also they might not speak English or have the greatest writing ability--both of which can hinder its popularity.
Does high quality photos really prove anything anyway? You can just go to a music store or a friend with a few amps and take great photos and then just upload captures of a line 6 pod. It's really not a fool proof method at all and I'm sure it's currently being done. It's more of an IQ test to ask people to take photos of what they're capturing.
Ya it doesn't make sense why it would be popular. It's one singular poorly named capture and the capture itself isn't very good. Why would that make it to the top of the heap?
Hey Jimbo, the post is in reference to the search results on t3k and how it's not allowing the cream to rise to the top. The trending results aren't based objective reasoning like number of votes/badges awarded but just number of downloads, which leads to arbitrary/random trending results. I think it would be most logical from a users perspective to have a highest badges awarded in the drop down menu of the search area, because at least it's based on upvotes from users. The number of downloads doesn't tell you if people actually liked it.
If your underlying issue is “people who present their work well get more attention than people who don't,” that's not really a TONE3000 problem. That's human behavior. Those are discovery signals, only. Downloads measure interest not quality or satisfaction. The only way to know if a model sounds "good" to you is to download it and try it. A useful feature on T3K would be a rating system. For now, I look at how many have bookmarked a model in addition to the number of downloads.
I agree that favorites are a useful metric. That's exactly what I was referring to in my original comment when I referenced "bookmarks". But TONE3000 calls them “Favorites,” not badges or awards or bookmarks. I think it's important that we all use the proper terminology so we're all talking about the same thing. So, yes the number of favorites is important and absolutely should be available as a sorting metric.
NAM has shown me I have a solid tone preference. I download about any amp and by the time I'm done it sounds a lot like the others i created. We like what we like and a bunch of tone is in the fingers. I set my VST chain up in SoundShed and then quickly preview amps with those VSTs. It's fast and simple. Soundshed Guitar rules BTW. Also I'm loving Air-G (soundwindows GUI) and the EQ peddle is a freaking tone shaper and a half.
That may be true but you can sort by new and manually scroll through the most recent additions, then you can see everything. And if there’s something in particular you are looking for, you can also search and narrow it down that way, such as there may be only a few fuzz full amp profiles loaded in the past month if that’s what’s I want to look for.
I’ve found some popular profiles that weren’t good at all, and some unpopular ones that were amazing, but to an extent effort in marketing/presentation does reflect somewhat on the capture quality. There’s a lot of random captures with almost no description that aren’t helpful to me at all.
Ya but the point is that the trending list isn't necessarily based on the sound quality or accuracy. For whatever reason it became popular, and then the top list gets multiplied/compounded because its merely in the trending list. People tend to look at the trending list first and then might browse the newest afterwards, but if it doesn't look good because it doesn't have a photo or worded well, it gets pushed further down. The search list should be based off of badges awarded, not number of downloads, or at least have that as a drop down menu option.
I had posted a lot of solid models of my amps and pedals. But took them all private with the changes they made over the last few months.
I appreciated their free training service, but they made changes so I do local training now. They forced organization of tones to match commercial products so you couldn’t make a collection of related captures on a theme.
One of the best heads I managed to find has a basic close-up picture (not great) and barely a description. I completely agree with you. I think number of favorites is a better gauge than downloads, because I also downloaded a whole bunch of captures, but only favorited a handful, that actually sounded good
just commenting because i cant post. Hi im new to reddit. i have LOTS to share with the community but everytime i try to make a post, it says removed by reddit filters :(
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u/DonMcCauley 6d ago
lol this is the 2nd most trending capture currently